Moby Dick Gets Translated Into Emojis And Ends Up In Library Of Congress

Share This Article

If you don’t have time to read all 206,052 words of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, maybe you’ll have time for the abbreviated version.

So what’s the story behind this unique twist on the classic, Moby Dick? Emoji Dick all started back in 2009. A creative Kickstarter employee raised more than $3500. With this huge sum, Fred Benenson translated the tale into emojis. Using the workers of Amazon’s online Mechanical Turk, the users translated each sentence. Then each submitted sentence was then voted on through other users.

The data engineer explains that he has always been fascinated by emojis, every since he first used them in 2009. He was amazed by this “new mode of expression”

The crazy part is that the modern emoji twist is now housed in the Library of Congress. Smithsonian Magazine spoke to the person who acquired ‘Emoji Dick’.

““It’s up to the readers of Emoji Dick to decide whether to take it seriously as content,” says Michael Neubert, a digital projects specialist at the Library of Congress, who acquired the book. What intrigues him is that it is “an artifact of this particular moment in time”—a unique representation of digital language for future generations to study when emoji, and perhaps even cellphones, have gone the way of the telegraph.”

About Meagan Freeman

Primary Sidebar

Gift-giving isn’t just a seasonal affair between friends, families and acquaintances. The art of gift-giving is also conducted on a national scale with countries often sending each other big, weird and expensive gifts. Experts in all things gifts, Vanilla Reindeer put together some examples of these expensive and odd gifts that have been shared between…Continue Reading ›

There are lots of ways you can make Pres. Trump feel welcome: you can offer him coffee, or mow a penis into a field for him to view as his plane lands. The willie in question has been chopped by Born Eco ahead of the arrival of President Trump, who visited the UK Monday for…Continue Reading ›

The year isn’t even halfway over, yet Donald Trump has managed to make a fool of himself and our country countless times. From inviting the national college football champions, the Clemson Tigers, all the way to the White House for some McDonald’s to his to the dreaded results of Mueller’s investigation, it has been one…Continue Reading ›

Republicans have always said that when they gained control in Congress, they would work to overturn Roe v. Wade and here they are, cashing in on that promise one state at a time. So far, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio have all passed incredibly restrictive laws on abortions, making it illegal for women…Continue Reading ›

If you’re on Snapchat, then you’ve probably played around with (and were likely horrified by) their filter gender swap filters. While you’re probably using these filters to send hilarious pics to your friends, some guys using them to create Tinder profiles. What likely started out as a joke has quickly evolved, and these guys are…Continue Reading ›

“Milkshaking” is a hilarious trend in Britain where a milkshake is thrown at and ideally lands on a far-right politician or activist. The point of this nonviolence protest is to humiliate them without causing injury. Physical injury at least. There’s no doubt that milkshaking has led to a few bruised egos. Not only is this…Continue Reading ›